Opinion

We tend to think of digital recording and information technology as something modern, whereas John Watkinson argues that nothing could be further from the truth. In order to see my point, we need to go back in two ways; back to the foundations of information theory and back before rock and roll, to the beginning…

We are told we live in an information society. John Watkinson wonders how we recognize information when we see it. Dig deep enough, and everything is digital. Our DNA uses quaternary coding in discrete symbols. Atoms consist of discrete particles. Quantum mechanics teaches us about discrete packets of energy. Electrons are discrete and so on.…

John Watkinson looks at the aperture effect and finds that it crops up in a surprising number of places. One way of considering the aperture effect is that it is nature’s way of pointing out how non-ideal our efforts are. The ubiquity of the aperture effect underlines that next to nothing is ideal. An aperture…

John Watkinson considers deflation in the digital world. Since the economic crash of 2008 it has become clear that it was not a temporary event, but a correction whose results would be near permanent. Corrections take place when the wrong road has been taken for too long. In this case the wrong road was excessive…

I got to thinking about science, and how much better my life has been because of it; how much better things work. Yet I realise that I am in a minority and that we don’t live in a scientific world. Am I a scientist? Frankly no; that word doesn’t describe me. My life is not…

John Watkinson wonders whether digital is automatically wonderful. I have lived long enough to have seen the so called digital revolution take place, not just in audio but in life. In one sense I feel very fortunate to have lived through that era and to have made a living documenting it. Being in the right…

John Watkinson wonders about computer and network security A long time ago when Pontius was still training to be a pilot, it was possible to consider audio as a separate topic. Today such a separation is impossible. Audio is just another form of information that can be conveyed over some network or other and we…

John Watkinson is a big fan of analog audio. An analog is a phenomenon that behaves similarly to another. In speech we have similes and education is full of parallels. Whilst a painting or a sculpture can last thousands of years, in audio we have a problem that sound cannot be preserved at all in…

John Watkinson relates a personal history of radio. The family radio in the kitchen churned out uninspiring stuff most of the time, but I remember in 1962 it emitted a song called “Love Letters” by Ketty Lester, and when I listened to it I felt, probably for the first time, that here was a song…

John Watkinson tries to be rational. Sometimes I like to discuss topics that are not immediately identifiable with audio. Audio is part of the world and is not the only discipline in which excellence is pursued, and achieving excellence by rejecting the mediocre takes place in many other endeavours that are worthy of study. We…